The Cradle level in Thief 3 will forever and always be the scariest experience I’ve ever had in any video game, including horror games. It elevated an otherwise mediocre game to be a worthy entry besides the first two games.
cliched yes, but I will always remember how scared as hell I was playing Silent Hill for the first time in high school, when you go down that dutch angle alleyway and the evil toddlers stab you to death…
i couldnt play any more for a few days haha, it was a pretty stand out memory for scary game stuff. Its hard to state how unexpected it was at the time, I hadnt played any early horror games, and I dont know how many similar experiences there were at the time (year 2000ish) so it really was brutal and surprising
Fatal Frame has gotten lost to history a bit, but I remember those games having the reputation as being the scariest that games have ever gotten when they were new.
The original Resident Evil was pretty revolutionary and terrifying for me, but the 100% scariest I’ve played is the original Dead Space.
More recently, The Outlast Trials is really good, and I would HIGHLY recommend any of the Dark Pictures Anthology games, but my favorite is Man of Medan.
I really loved it. But way too early i realized what was up. I remember reading about the gas leak incident in some comic i read when i was a kid in the 80s, and my mind made that connection rather early. I still enjoyed it throughly, and I’m always waiting for whatever Supermassive is up to next.
the original resident evil. couldn’t even get through the first 15 minutes before i threw the controller across the room. i don’t play scary games anymore, but i love watching other people play!
I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking it out of my dad’s collection of grownup games to try it anyway.
So there’s this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you’re running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.
So I hadn’t hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.
I still haven’t played the game since.
But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She’s playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn’t.
So I’m a little disappointed, but I figure it’s a remake so maybe they’re switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.
Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this “safe” corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.
Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I’m not alone.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s requiem. It’s an older game, GameCube era. I don’t like horror games and this one isn’t true horror. There are some good jump scares and body horror though. I had to stop after a certain scene because of the jump scares. The sanity system is really great.
I got a 1st Gen 3DS second hand some time ago. What I like:
Pokemon, Zelda, and Animal Crossing.
The 3D effect and dual cameras are neat, though a little gimmicky.
What I don’t like:
The heavy reliance upon internet connectivity. I can’t change the details of the account on it without losing access to the downloaded games. I can’t even change it anyway, because the online store is closed.
The control stick sucks. It’s good for a very flat control stick, but it doesn’t feel nice to use.
Proprietary power connector.
The viewing angle on the screen is pretty shallow.
I have a Steam Deck, and it’s just better in all respects. I get that it’s comparing a very new device against an old device, but I don’t really see a reason to pull out the 3DS when I could have a better experience on the SD.
My hands are pretty medium sized, and I think it’s the most comfortable portable device I have ever had in my hands. It is however a bit heavy. It’s also not a pocket device like the Gameboy was, although most DS are not very pocketable either.
I upgraded to a New 3DS XL for Monster Hunter because I needed the control nub for camera control. The viewing angle with eye tracking is SO MUCH BETTER.
I did rip out the control nub and replace it with a PSP joystick, improving it vastly.
I bought a Steam Deck just to support the most important thing that ever happened to Linux gaming, but mine has actually just been gathering dust. It's far too big to really be a handheld, doesn't fit in my pocket, and does not fill the role that Nintendo's handhelds served for me. The main thing I do end up using it for is taking Deck + dock to FGC events for a portable setup.
Last year I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus, a little emulator handheld, as an impulse buy because it was on sale super cheap. I ended up putting far more time into it than I ever did with the Deck.
My ultimate dream would be to someday get SteamOS running on a DS-sized form factor. Doesn't need to be beefy, just needs to fit in my pocket and run my favorite 2D indie games.
The DS series was the peak handheld generation for me. I like that the console’s design encouraged creative game mechanics, and it has some of my favourite games of all time. I have a DS Lite, a 3DS and a new 3DS, though I think the original DS line had the better game library compared to the 3DS. The camera and 3D effect were rather gimmicky and didn’t add much value for me.
I think the game that best encapsulates what I love about the DS is The World Ends With You, a JRPG set in modern Tokyo that used both screens at once in its action combat system - to control two different characters. The character on the bottom screen would have you use touch gestures to trigger attacks, while you needed to do button combos to control the character on the top. It was insanely fun!
Other games I liked from the early DS era are Hotel Dusk, a detective game that is played in “vertical mode” so you hold the console like a book - and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the original Japanese version of Elite Beat Angels, a rhythm game.
I also played all romance/otome games that were available in English for the DS, my favourite was Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side.
The DS figured out touch-based interactions way better than smartphones which are like the main touch-based “handheld” nowadays. That is because you could dedicate the entire touchscreen to gameplay input, since you still had the top screen to show relevant game information. Smartphones on the other hand need to utilize the entire screen both for input and displaying stuff, which just doesn’t work as well imo.
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